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beckoning night. We waved furiously, maniacally, as if hoping to generate enough turbulence to pull her back to central Pennsylvania. “Bye-bye, Zenobia!”
    â€œBye-bye!” our baby called from out of the speckled darkness, and then she was gone.
    Â 
    The Earth turned—once, twice. Raspberries, apples, Christmas trees, asparagus, basset pups—each crop made its demands, and by staying busy we stayed sane.
    One morning during the height of raspberry season I was supervising our roadside fruit stand and chatting with one of our regulars—Lucy Berens, Asa’s former third-grade teacher—when Polly rushed over. She looked crazed and pleased. Her eyes expanded like domes of bubble gum emerging from Asa’s mouth.
    She told me she’d just tried printing out a
Down to Earth
, only the ImageWriter II had delivered something else entirely. “Here,” she said, shoving a piece of computer paper in my face, its edges embroidered with sprocket holes.
    Â 
Dear Mom and Dad:
This is being transmitted via a superluminal wave generated by nonlocal quantum correlations. You won’t be able to write back.
I have finally found a proper place for myself, ten light-years from Garber Farm. In my winter, I can see your star. Your system is part of a constellation that looks to me like a Zebu. Z is for Zebu, remember? I am happy.
Big news. A year ago, various mammalian lines—tree shrews, mostly—emerged from those few feeble survivors of the Fourth of July catastrophe. And then, last month, I acquired—are you ready?—people. That’s right, people. Human beings, sentient primates, creatures entirely like yourselves. God, but they’re clever: cars, deodorants, polyvinyl chlorides, all of it. I like them. They’re brighter than the dinosaurs, and they have a certain spirituality. In short, they’re almost worthy of being what they are: your grandchildren.
Every day, my people look out across the heavens, and their collective gaze comes to rest on Earth. Thanks to Asa, I can explain to them what they’re seeing, all the folly and waste, the way your whole planet’s becoming a cesspool. So tell my brother he has saved my life. And tell him to study hard—he’ll be a great scientist when he grows up.
Mom and Dad, I think of you every day. I hope you’re doing well, and that Garber Farm is prospering. Give Asa a kiss for me.
All my love,
Zenobia
    Â 
    â€œA letter from our daughter,” I explained to Lucy Berens.
    â€œDidn’t know you had one,” said Lucy, snatching up an aluminum pail so she could go pick a quart of raspberries.
    â€œShe’s far away,” said Polly.
    â€œShe’s happy,” I said.
    That night, we went into Asa’s room while he was practicing on his trap set, thumping along with the Apostolic Succession. He shut off the CD, put down his drumsticks, and read Zenobia’s letter—slowly, solemnly. He yawned and slipped the letter into his math book. He told us he was going to bed. Fourteen: a moody age.
    â€œYou saved her life?” I said. “What does she mean?”
    â€œYou don’t get it?”
    â€œUh-uh.”
    Our son drummed a paradiddle on his math book. “Remember what Dr. Logos said about those coal miners? Remember when he told us Zenobia was like a canary? Well, obviously he got it backwards. My sister’s not the canary—
we
are.
Earth
is.”
    â€œHuh?” said Polly.
    â€œWe’re Zenobia’s canary,” said Asa.
    We kissed our son, left his room, closed the door. The hallway was papered over with his treasures—with miss piggy for president posters, rock star portraits, and lobby cards from the various environmental apocalypses he’d been renting regularly from Jake’s Video:
Silent Running, Soylent Green, Frogs
. . .
    â€œWe’re Zenobia’s canary,” said Polly.
    â€œIs it too late for us, then?” I